“A Jack of All Spaces: the Public Market in Revolutionary Philadelphia”
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“A Jack of All Spaces: The Public Market in Revolutionary Philadelphia” Candice L. Harrison, Emory University, PEAES Dissertation Fellow, and MCEAS Barra Dissertation Fellow Presented to a Joint Seminar of The Program for Early American Economy and Society and McNeil Center for Early American Studies Series The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street 16 February 2006, 3PM (Please do not cite, quote, or circulate without written permission from the author) 2 Writing about the wheels of commerce in the early modern world, Fernand Braudel observed that the “clamor of the market-place has no difficulty in reaching our ears.”1 Nor, one could add, have the sensational portraits of mutton legs swinging from hooks, plump fish hucksters and rough-housing butchers, failed to capture our vision. Even the smells of freshly baked rolls and ripe summer berries have competed for our olfactory attention. Yet by and large, this sensual bombardment of market experiences has escaped the attention of early American historians. Only in the past decade have architectural historians begun to redirect our vision to North American market-places as serious sites of scholarly inquiry, but the broader field of U.S. historians continues to lag behind. Because of the attention devoted to the growth of capitalism and the reach of Adam Smith’s invisible market hand, a thorough analysis of the market as a physical place that complimented, sparked, and resisted these forces in early America has yet to be written.2 In consequence, we still know very little about the “market” that mattered most to the vast majority of early Americans.3 When the bulk of late eighteenth century Philadelphians imagined and spoke of a “market,” they had a physical place in mind—one that stretched two blocks through the center of the city’s principal thoroughfare, High Street. Composed of roughly textured brick columns, a gabled roof and stone walkways, the public market served as the city’s most prominent and versatile public space. Viewed in its purest form, the market served as a central site of local economic exchange. Yet even a cursory glance at the mode of eighteenth-century exchange reveals just how complicated those transactions could be. The economic transactions that transpired in the market-place were only in small part affected by the fluctuation of prices based on supply and demand. They were also, and more significantly, affected by communal notions of “just prices,” ordinances passed by municipal authorities, social relationships that structured the life of the city, and the network of farmers and vendors that stretched deep into the rural 1 Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, v. II (New York: 1982), 25. 2 The great exception here is Helen Tangires’ recent monograph, Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth- Century America. (Baltimore, 2003). Unlike Tangires who reads market-places almost purely as vestiges of the “moral economy,” however, I read them as more complicated places that both contributed to and challenged the growth of a market economy. 3 Other recent studies include Bryan Clark Green, “The Structure of Civic Exchange: Market Houses in Early Virginia,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, v. 6, Shaping Communities, (1997), 189-203; James M. Mayo, “The American Public Market,” Journal of Architectural Education, v. 45, no.1 (Nov. 1991), 41-57; Jay R. Barshinger, “Provisions for Trade: The Market House in Southeastern Pennsylvania” PhD. Dissertation, 1994, The Pennsylvania State University. The literature on the rise of capitalism is, of course, too extensive to list here. See Michael Merrill, “Putting “Capitalism” in Its Place: A Review of Recent Literature,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., v. 52, no. 2 (1995), 315-326. 3 countryside.4 Furthermore, economic transactions formed only one layer of exchange that occurred in the High Street market. As a centrally located public space, the market often morphed into a communal stage. On any given market day, performances ranged from political proclamations, to public whippings, to fist fights between old and new enemies. By night, a different scene unfolded—one more visibly defined by race and class. An evening stroll might reveal interracial gatherings of slaves and servants drumming up music on milk pails, illicit women propositioning farmers at their wagons and intoxicated vagrants sleeping off a night of strong drink on a market stall. The market, then, truly was a jack of all spaces, subject to a cross- section of political, economic, cultural and social forces. 5 Because it drew together a broad body of individuals, Philadelphia’s public market naturally existed as a tense physical environment, subject to multiple forms of social disruption. Still, throughout much of the colonial era only isolated disturbances emerged. Beginning in the early 1770s, however, new disputes within and about the public market began to radiate throughout the city streets and presses. A small constituency of Quaker-led residents launched cries of the “The people’s liberties are in danger…!” not in response to British policies, but to a proposed market-place extension. In the midst of war, the Continental army intercepted country marketers in route to feed the British-occupied city, whipped and branded them with the initials “GH,” and sent them onward toward Philadelphia to meet the personage of their loyalty, General Howe. And in the immediate aftermath of war, “ill-designing” residents spawned a fear of insurrection by harassing and intimidating rural vendors.6 Collectively, these increasing conflicts over and within the public market-place in Revolutionary Philadelphia spelled the breakdown of the “market peace”—a fragile system of mutual obligations between the state, vendors, and the public that worked to subject private 4 In accordance with economic theory, I am arguing here that eighteenth century market-places had elements of self- regulation, but were not necessarily identifiable components of a self-regulating market system. For a precise discussion of the distinctions between “markets” as discussed by economists and historians, and distinctions between self-regulating markets and market-places, see Walter C. Neale, “The Market in Theory and History,” in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Economies in History and Theory (Glencoe, 1957), 357-391. While not categorically confined to kinship groups or ethnic tribes, I would argue that similar social relations that Karl Polanyi and succeeding economic anthropologists have found “embedded” in the markets of traditional societies, also contributed to the nature of exchange in Philadelphia’s public market-places. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, repr. (Boston, 1964), Chs. 4, 5. 5 J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, v. I (1884), 186, 208, John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, (Philadelphia, 1856), v. I, 62. 6 The Pennsylvania Packet, April 5, 1772; Pennsylvania Chronicle, September 4, 1773; In Council, Broadside. Philadelphia July 8, 1779. 4 interests to the public good. As the forthcoming pages argue, the conditions that sustained the “market peace” shattered during this era because all three of the key ingredients that sustained it—a stable municipal corporation, a collective of vendors that relied upon a system of “just prices,” and a deferential public willing to submit its private interests for the public good—broke down. In part, these changes resulted from political theories that some historians have argued sparked the War of Independence, such as strengthened claims to Lockean notions of private property. More significantly, the breakdown of the market peace resulted from the economic and material strains of war that disrupted the day-to-day functions of the market-place and turned it into a political, economic and social battleground. As the city emerged from British occupation only to step into the throes of war-time inflation, the veneer of “public good” that had sustained the market during the colonial era had been torn away. In its place, lay a bevy of differing ideals, private interests and political loyalties of men and women that the market-place both reflected and exacerbated. * * * One only had to conjure up memories of life back across the English Atlantic to find the architectural inspiration for the High Street market. Built in the midst of a 100-foot wide thoroughfare, the market might have easily been plucked from the streets of Whitby or Edinburgh.7 (fig. 1) Like its English models, the early market-place was layered just beneath the town hall, adjacent to the stocks, pillory, whipping post and jail and had physically served as the center of public life in Philadelphia since its erection in 1709.8 (fig. 2) By the 1770s, new market additions had been built from Front to Third Street. The eastern end toward the Delaware, known as the “Jersey Market,” was a permanent roofed structure, placed upon brick pillars and reserved for the use of farmers and country vendors traveling across the river. Continuing after the intersection of Second Street, a new series of arched brick sheds abutted the older structure 7 James Schmiechen and Kenneth Carls, The British Market Hall: A Social and Architectural History, (New Haven, 1999) 3-19; Barshinger, “Provisions,” 20-21. 8 The colonial market essentially served as communal meeting space for a broad range of individuals and activities. George Whitefield had preached from the court house balcony with a voice rumored to be so boisterous that it stretched across the banks of the Delaware. Men filed up the steps to cast ballots for elected officials, and until the erection of the new State House in 1735, the General Assembly set laws and established policies directly above the battering and haggling of market men and women. 5 Figure 1. The Old Court House, Town Hall & Market in 1710, on High St.